We've talked about author Rob Reid many times on Techdirt, and had him on the podcast once before. Now, in what started as a project to promote his latest novel, Reid is hosting a podcast called After On, which tackles some pretty crazy real-world topics — from alien life to mind-reading technology — befitting a science fiction writer. This week, he returns to our podcast to discuss what it's like interviewing big thinkers about mind-bending ideas.

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]]>book-clubhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170711/12125837765Mon, 10 Jul 2017 13:18:00 PDTWhat If You Published Half Your Book For Free Online?Mike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170710/10103937757/what-if-you-published-half-your-book-free-online.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170710/10103937757/what-if-you-published-half-your-book-free-online.shtml
Almost exactly 17 years ago, we wrote about an interesting experiment in the movie world, in which the film Chicken Run freely chose to put the first 7 minutes of the film online (in my head, I remember it being the first 20 minutes, but I'll chalk that up to inflation). I thought it was a pretty clever experiment and am still surprised that this didn't become the norm. The idea is pretty straightforward -- rather than just doing a flashy trailer that may give away much of the movie anyway -- you give people the beginning of the actual movie, get them hooked, and convince them it's worthwhile to go pay to see the whole thing. Of course, that only works with good movies where the beginning hooks people. But... it's also interesting to think about whether or not this kind of thing might work for books as well.

In this always on world, where some fear that people are so hooked on short attention span bits of information raining down from Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, there's a reasonable concern that people just aren't willing or able to disconnect for long enough to actually read a full book. Some argue that we may be reading more, but getting less out of all of this. But now author/entrepreneur Rob Reid and Random House are experimenting with something similar. If they have to convince people to put down the internet to read a full book, why not go to the internet first. Rob has announced that he (and Random House) has teamed up with Medium to publish the first 40% of his latest novel, After On, which is coming out in full on August 1st.

Now, you may recall, five years ago, Rob came out with a fun book called Year Zero, a hilarious comic sci-fi story about aliens needing to destroy the earth... because of massive copyright infringement (no, really). With that book, we were able to publish a short excerpt, but that isn't always enough to get people hooked. With After On, a massive chunk of the (admittedly massive!) book will be published online in a dozen segments over the next few weeks leading up to the release of the actual book (the first few segments are entirely free -- and after that, they want you to become a "member" of Medium, but you can get your first two weeks free for membership -- or you can just go buy the book by that point.

Rob has written a blog post talking about this experiment and what went into it -- and he'll also be on the Techdirt podcast tomorrow to talk more about it. In this book, while not about copyright, it does touch on a number of other issues that we frequently write about here, including patents, privacy, AI, terms of service and... the general nature of startup culture. The book is super interesting and engaging, but this experiment is interesting in its own way as well:

After putting 7,500 hours of my life into it, I want After On to reach lots of people. But I’m even more interested in reaching the people it will truly resonate with. It’s quirky, costs money, and entails a real time commitment. So if it’s not right for you, I’d rather not take your dollars or hours (which is arguably bad for business — but good businesspeople don’t write sprawling novels for a living). Whereas if it is right for you, I want you to discover it with as little friction as possible. Both goals made a big excerpt on Medium seem like a good idea.

My pitch to Random House evoked the largely bygone practice of US magazines excerpting new books. Licensing fees cost editors less than a major article, and publishers were pleased to generate income while promoting new titles. This practice is now rare. Reasons include the drop-off in print advertising, which has lowered magazine page counts, squeezing content. So why not transplant this pillar of the publishing ecosystem? Without trees to topple or ink to smear, we can release much longer excerpts online. Digital excerpts travel globally, and widespread excerpts will help books reach their most natural audiences. Better fits between books and readers will make reading more delightful, which means more books should sell — and hey, presto, everybody wins!

Anyway, check out the first excerpt that just went a little while ago, in which Rob (or the book's narrator...?) dares you to read the whole damn thing...

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]]>interesting-experiments-in-publishinghttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170710/10103937757Tue, 5 Nov 2013 23:06:00 PSTPrice Elasticity Can Work: Dropping Ebook Price To $1 Catapulted Year-Old Book Onto NYT Best Seller ListMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131102/23220925108/price-elasticity-can-work-dropping-ebook-price-to-1-catapulted-year-old-book-onto-nyt-best-seller-list.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131102/23220925108/price-elasticity-can-work-dropping-ebook-price-to-1-catapulted-year-old-book-onto-nyt-best-seller-list.shtmlebook pricing, and how many wanted to keep them artificially high, because they still think that's the best way to maximize profits. However, in that post, we also noted that Rob Reid's funny sci-fi novel about aliens wanting to destroy the earth over our copyright laws (they owe all the money in the world to the record labels because they've been infringing), was being price-tested for a while at $1. The book had been out for over a year, and apparently Random House was willing to do some price experimentation. The result? The book that came out 15 months earlier jumped back in the NY Times best seller list, coming in the 22nd spot on the ebook fiction list.

Of course, anyone who's followed Gabe Newell at Valve knows all about how price elasticity works. Dropping your price significantly doesn't always mean a decrease in revenues or profits -- and can actually mean an increase due to significantly greater volume. So, again, this isn't revolutionary, but it's still quite amazing how resistant so many publishing companies are to this idea that selling for less might actually be a good idea. For all the talk about "devaluing the book," who is actually going to complain if lower prices bring in both more readers and more money?

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]]>look-at-thathttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20131102/23220925108Tue, 8 Oct 2013 16:03:00 PDTThe Good And Bad In Chaotic eBook PricingMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131008/02315324790/good-bad-chaotic-ebook-pricing.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131008/02315324790/good-bad-chaotic-ebook-pricing.shtmlridiculousness of ebook pricing, where some publishers seem to think that sky high prices for ebooks (often higher than physical copies) makes sense, despite the lack of printing, packaging, shipping and inventory costs. And, of course, we won't even get into the question of the price fixing debacle. Art Brodsky recently wrote a fascinating piece over at Wired about how ebook pricing is an "abomination," because it's designed to price people out of reading. He points out that we should think more about ebooks like we think about apps, since that's a much more direct comparison than "books." And then he gets into a discussion of how publishers are going crazy with their library pricing:

Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing.

Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out.

In another wrinkle: Random House jacked up its ebook prices to libraries 300 percent last year, and HarperCollins limits the number of check-outs per ebook. This means libraries have to lease another “copy” when they reach a certain threshold … as if the ebook had died or something. In fact, that’s the problem some authors have with ebooks — not just that they earn less money on them, but that “They never degrade. They are perpetual. That harms writers directly,” as historian and novelist David O. Stewart has observed.

As Brodsky notes, this whole situation is ridiculous, and it harms pretty much everyone. Also, it seems to be in direct contrast with others, even within those very same publishers, who realize that crazy high prices for ebooks are a really bad idea. You may recall Rob Reid, the author of the comic sci-fi novel Year Zero. If you don't remember, it's the story of a world in which aliens want to destroy the earth to avoid having to pay all the money in the universe for a prolonged bout of copyright infringement, thanks to their love of Earth music, which they listened to without realizing the copyright implications. Last year, we published an excerpt of the book along with a fun video conversation between Rob and myself.

This week, Rob has a really interesting blog post about how his publisher, Random House, (yes the same one mentioned above for jacking up its library rates) is running an experiment by offering the ebook for his novel at $0.99, and he rightly applauds this decision to embrace and experiment with prices like that, rather than screaming about how low prices "devalue" the book. After saying "hats off to Random House for testing out pricing tactics that some would view as kamikaze lunacy," he compares how publishers are willing to do this with how the record labels acted back when Rob ran one of the earliest online music services (which became Rhapsody):

For years, we pleaded with the major labels to at least experiment with selling downloads for 99¢ a song. We were always told that this would “devalue” music. As if the only way to properly honor that one Chumbawumba song (yes, it was that long ago…) was to charge $15.99 to get it glued to eleven other songs in a full-length CD. Wrong. What truly devalued music was requiring the downloading public to pirate it rather than purchase it for five long years.

He further notes that while some wish to blame "piracy" for the problems the industry faces, the real problem is the industry responding incorrectly to that new digital world:

A convenient fiction that still makes the rounds blames music’s gruesome decade on Napster-abetted piracy. This is like saying that the outsiders commonly called Barbarians caused Rome’s collapse. Rome conquered the Samnites, Carthage, Hellenist empires, and countless other well-oiled foes. But Rome ultimately fell because it reacted to the Barbarian threat in wholly self-destructive ways – not because the mere existence of Barbarians magically doomed history’s greatest empire.

So, indeed, it's great to see Random House willing to experiment with $1 ebooks -- and it could be quite a successful experiment. Last year, we wrote about how Paulo Coelho had tremendous success when his publisher, Harper Collins, agreed to sell his ebooks for $0.99 as well, leading to a massive jump in sales. This isn't a guarantee that people will pay that amount, obviously, or that such an experiment is a sure-fire success. But it is at least somewhat encouraging that these publishers are willing to experiment on that front. Now, if they weren't so damn afraid of those crazy "public libraries"....

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]]>ups and downshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20131008/02315324790Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:16:55 PDTStupid, Antiquated German Regulations Mean Germans Couldn't Watch Our Google Hangout With Rob Reid YesterdayMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120810/03464619987/stupid-antiquated-german-regulations-mean-germans-couldnt-watch-our-google-hangout-with-rob-reid-yesterday.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120810/03464619987/stupid-antiquated-german-regulations-mean-germans-couldnt-watch-our-google-hangout-with-rob-reid-yesterday.shtmllive streaming interview with Rob Reid about his book, Year Zero, which was a lot of fun. During the course of the video, we discovered (via some tweets) that people in Germany were blocked from watching. As I said in the video, I assumed that this was part of the dispute in Germany between YouTube & GEMA, the German collection society that is demanding huge fees for any music that is played on YouTube. Because -- unlike every other major collection society -- GEMA had refused to come to the table to negotiate a license, YouTube ended up pulling basically all music videos in Germany. I thought perhaps something related to that was why Google Hangouts weren't allowed. Though, I couldn't figure out how that made sense, since we weren't playing any music (Rob's offer to sing, notwithstanding).

However, as pointed out by Ruquay K Calloway, the actual story may be more bizarre. While YouTube has been rightfully proud of launching Hangouts On Air (the feature we used to broadcast live) worldwide, Germany is actually missing from the big list.

It turns out that it may be a different ridiculous regulation, however. There's an old "broadcasting law" in Germany that was put on the books decades ago to stop pirate TV stations. And it says you can't broadcast to more than 500 people without a special license. And, because that's impossible for every one-off person seeking to use a tool like Hangouts on Air, it appears that Hangouts On Air is just off-limits in Germany. So, I'm sorry for all the Germans who wanted to watch the video live, but perhaps an effort should be made to wipe that silly rule off the books already.

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]]>stupid-regulationshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120810/03464619987Thu, 9 Aug 2012 12:00:00 PDTLive Video Chat With Rob Reid, Author Of 'Year Zero' About Aliens & CopyrightMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120809/01364119972/live-video-chat-with-rob-reid-author-year-zero-about-aliens-copyright.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120809/01364119972/live-video-chat-with-rob-reid-author-year-zero-about-aliens-copyright.shtmlmentioned earlier this week, at 12:30pm PT/3:30pm ET today, we're hosting a live video chat with Rob Reid, the author of Year Zero, our Techdirt Book Club book of the month for July. Rob will be joining me at our offices, and we'll be broadcasting the conversation via Google Hangouts on Air. We'll be posting the embed beneath this text, so it should stream live if you're reading this while the conversation is ongoing. If you're here afterwards, the video should be replayable below.

If you have any questions that you'd like to ask Rob during this conversation, please tweet with the hashtag #yearzero. We will be monitoring that tweetstream and will try to take some questions from the audience.

This is the first time that we're doing something like this via a video stream, rather than a text chat. Please bear with us in case there are technical difficulties. It is very much an experiment, but hopefully provides a worthwhile experience.

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]]>ask some questionshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120809/01364119972Tue, 7 Aug 2012 15:47:00 PDTJoin Us Thursday For A Conversation With Rob Reid, Author Of Year Zero; Plus August's Book Of The MonthMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120807/00073319950/join-us-thursday-conversation-with-rob-reid-author-year-zero-plus-augusts-book-month.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120807/00073319950/join-us-thursday-conversation-with-rob-reid-author-year-zero-plus-augusts-book-month.shtmlYear Zero, the sci-fi novel about aliens realizing they owe the earth all the money in the universe because they've been infringing US copyright law while listening to all of our music (which they love). We published an excerpt here. For the last few books, we've held text chats via CoverItLive, but with Rob, we're going to try something different. On Thursday, at 12:30pm PT/3:30pm ET, we'll be broadcasting a live video chat (via Google's "Hangouts on Air" and YouTube) between myself and Rob (he'll be live at Techdirt's offices). I'll have a bunch of questions for him, but we'll also be taking questions online, which you can submit via Twitter during the chat, using the hashtag #yearzero, which we'll be monitoring. You'll also be able to submit questions via Google Plus. As with the text chat, this will be an experiment, so we'll see how it goes.

We also wanted to announce the August book of the month, which is No Safe Harbor, a collection of essays, on a variety of topics that we cover here on Techdirt, put together by the US Pirate Party. You can buy the book at Amazon or (of course) download it from the link above in pretty much every format imaginable. We'll be talking to Andrew "K'Tetch" Norton, who put the book together late in August or early in September.

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]]>no safe harborshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120807/00073319950Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:24:00 PDTAnswer Some Trivia Questions To Get A Free Copy Of Year Zero; The Epic Sci-Fi Story Of What Happens When Aliens & Copyright IntermingleMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120718/03225719740/answer-some-trivia-questions-to-get-free-copy-year-zero-epic-sci-fi-story-what-happens-when-aliens-copyright-intermingle.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120718/03225719740/answer-some-trivia-questions-to-get-free-copy-year-zero-epic-sci-fi-story-what-happens-when-aliens-copyright-intermingle.shtmlexcerpt from Rob Reid's awesome Year Zero novel, and offered up free copies to the commenters who got the highest ranked voting. In retrospect, perhaps we should have realized this effort was going to fail. Whether it was "performance anxiety" from commenters with a free book on the line, a lack of something specific to comment on or (most likely) an unwillingness of people to vote since it might take away from their own chances of winning, the comments on the post got almost no votes. Only one qualifying comment got a serious number votes. One anonymous comment got a bunch of votes too, but you had to be a named commenter to win a book.

That means we're still left with four books to give away, and this time we're going about it a bit differently: posting four trivia questions/scavenger hunt items, and the first people to answer each of them in our comments (with some key conditions) get the remaining books sent to them (the first correct response to each question wins -- so if someone gets the first question right, and you answer the same question before someone else answers one of the others, you don't get the book). In order to get the book, not only do you have to get the question right, but you have to leave your email address with your comment (in the email field, not publicly) so we can reach out to you. You also have to respond within 24 hours of us emailing you (check your spam filters!) or we move on to the next person on the list. Yes, again, you have to be in the US or Canada (sorry about this one, but I believe this is due to Random House only having distribution rights in those two countries). Also, you can only win one book. So even if you can answer more than one question, there's no reason to do it, other than to be that guy... and no one likes that guy.

Okay, here are the questions. Get answering:

Link to a Techdirt post that mentions the person who narrates the audiobook version of Year Zero? (Feel free to name the individual too).

Year Zero is frequently compared to a famous sci-fi series that was a "trilogy" in five books. A few times on Techdirt, we've paraphrased a famous saying by the author of that series. What's the famous saying he said, that we've paraphrased multiple times?

The excerpt we posted includes the protagonist in the story, Nick Carter, reciting the "standard terms" that show up in "almost every" major label contract. He notes that most people think he's joking when he tells them that language, but he's not. Of course, Carter is just a character in a funny novel... but he's not joking. Point to three news articles/blog posts (anywhere, doesn't need to be Techdirt) that point to very similar (does not need to be identical) language in actual music contracts.

Rob has cleverly made sure that he cannot use the most obvious title for a sequel to this book. How?

Good luck.

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]]>answer some questionshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120718/03225719740Tue, 10 Jul 2012 12:59:00 PDTExcerpt From Rob Reid's Year Zero; Plus A Chance To Win The BookRob Reidhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120710/03053019638/excerpt-rob-reids-year-zero-plus-chance-to-win-book.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120710/03053019638/excerpt-rob-reids-year-zero-plus-chance-to-win-book.shtmlAs we announced a few weeks ago, the July Techdirt Book Club book is Year Zero written by Rob Reid and which comes out today, published by Random House. Rob will be joining us in a few weeks to talk about writing a comic sci-fi novel about the mess that is copyright law... but in the meantime, he's provided the following excerpt, which is Chapter 1. There is a "prologue" before this, which you can read here, or you can just watch this video, which more or less covers the prologue info:

As part of this, Rob and Random House have agreed to do another give away, this time just for Techdirt readers, which will go to five commenters on this post, based on your voting scores on the comments. We'll give one copy of the book each to the highest ranked "funny" and "insightful" comments, and then the three highest total scores other than the top ranked (so either funny or insightful). There are a few conditions: you have to be in the US or Canada. I know this sucks for those of you not in those places, but there's nothing we can do about it. Also, to win, we obviously have to be able to contact you, which means (a) you need to be logged in when you comment, so we can email you and (b) you have to respond to our email informing you of your win within 24 hours of our email. Also, you can't win twice -- if you score the highest in multiple categories, you get a prize in one and the others will go to the runners-up. We'll keep the voting open until Wednesday night and then tally the votes. So, get to work with your funny/insightful comments...

CHAPTER ONE: ASTLEY

Even if she'd realized that my visitors were aliens who had come to our office to initiate contact
with humanity, Barbara Ann would have resented their timing. Assistants at our law firm clearout at five-thirty, regardless -- and that was almost a minute ago.

"I don't have anyone scheduled," I said, when she called to grouse about the late arrival. "Who is it?"

"I don't know, Nick. They weren't announced."

"You mean they just sort of . . . turned up at your desk?" I stifled a sneeze as I said this. I'd been fighting a beast of a cold all week.

"Pretty much."

This was odd. Reception is two key-card-protected floors above us, and no one gets through
unaccompanied, much less unannounced. "What do they look like?" I asked.

I was about to ask her to maybe try miming some information out of them, but thought better of it. The day was technically over. And like most of her peers, Barbara Ann has a French postal worker's sense of divine entitlement when it comes to her hours. This results from there being just one junior assistant for every four junior lawyers, which makes them monopoly providers of answered phones, FedEx runs, and other secretarial essentials to some truly desperate customers. So as usual, I caved. "Okay, send 'em in."

The first one through the door had dark eyes and a bushy beard. He wore a white robe, a black turban, and a diver's watch the size of a small bagel. Apart from the watch, he looked like the Hollywood ideal of a fatwa-shrieking cleric -- until I noticed a shock of bright red hair protruding from under his turban. This made him look faintly Irish, so I silently christened him O'Sama. His partner was dressed like a nun -- although in a tight habit that betrayed the curves of a lap dancer. She had a gorgeous tan and bright blue eyes and was young enough to get carded anywhere.

O'Sama gazed at me with a sort of childlike amazement, while the sister kept it cool. She tried to catch his eye -- but he kept right on staring. So she tapped him on the shoulder, pointing at her head. At this, they both stuck their fingers under their headdresses to adjust something. "Now we can hear," the nun announced, straightening out a big, medieval-looking crucifix that hung around her neck.

This odd statement aside, I thought I knew what was happening. My birthday had passed a few days back without a call from any of my older brothers. It would be typical of them to forget -- but even more typical of them to pretend to forget, and then ambush me with a wildly inappropriate birthday greeting at my stodgy New York law office. So I figured I had about two seconds before O'Sama started beatboxing and the nun began to strip. Since you never know when some partner's going to barge through your door, I almost begged them to leave. But then I remembered that I was probably getting canned soon anyway. So why not gun for YouTube glory, and capture the fun on my cellphone?

As I considered this, the nun fixed me with a solemn gaze. "Mr. Carter. We are visitors from a distant star."

That settled it. "Then I better record this for NASA." I reached across the desk for my iPhone.

"Not a chance." She extended a finger and the phone leapt from the desk and darted toward her. Then it stopped abruptly, emitted a bright green flash, and collapsed into a glittering pile of dust on the floor.

"What the . . . ?" I basically talk for a living, but this was all I could manage.

"We're camera shy." The nun retracted her finger as if sheathing a weapon. "And as I mentioned, we‘re also visitors from a distant star."

I nodded mutely. That iPhone trick had made a believer out of me.

"And we want you to represent us," O'Sama added. "The reputation of Carter, Geller & Marks extends to the farthest reaches of the universe."

The absurdity of this flipped me right back to thinking "prank" -- albeit one featuring some awesome sleight of hand. "Then you know I'll sue your asses if I don't get my iPhone back within the next two parsecs," I growled, trying to suppress the wimpy, nasal edge
that my cold had injected into my voice. I had no idea what a parsec was, but remembered the term from Star Wars.

"Oh, up your nose with a rubber hose," the nun hissed. As I was puzzling over this odd phrase, she pointed at the dust pile on the floor. It glowed green again, then erupted into a tornado-like form, complete with thunderbolts and lightning. This rose a few feet off the ground before reconstituting itself into my phone, which then resettled gently onto my desk. That refuted the prank theory nicely -- putting me right back into the alien-believer camp.

"Thank you very kindly," I said, determined not to annoy Xena Warrior Fingers ever, ever again.

"Don't mention it. Anyway, as my colleague was saying, the reputation of Carter, Geller &
Marks extends to the farthest corner of the universe, and we'd like to retain your services."

Now that I was buying the space alien bit, this hit me in a very different way. The farthest corner of the universe is a long way for fame to travel, even for assholes like us. I mean, global fame, sure -- to the extent that law firms specializing in copyright and patents actually get famous. We're the ones who almost got a country booted from the UN over its lax enforcement of DVD copyrights. We're even more renowned for our many jihads against the Internet. And we're downright notorious for virtually shutting down American automobile production over a patent claim that was simply preposterous. So yes, Earthly fame I was aware of. But I couldn't imagine why they'd be hearing about us way out on Zørkan 5, or wherever these two were from.

"So, what area of the law do you need help in?" I asked in a relaxed, almost bored tone. Feigning calm believably is a survival tactic that I perfected as the youngest of four boys (or of seven, if you count our cousins, who lived three doors down. I sure did). It made me boring to pick on -- and useless as a prank victim, because I'd treat the damnedest events and circumstances as being
mundane, and entirely expected. It had also helped me immensely as a lawyer (although by itself, it had not been enough to make me a successful one).

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]]>techdirt book clubhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120710/03053019638Thu, 7 Jun 2012 14:31:00 PDTAliens v. The RIAA! Win An Early Release Copy Of Year Zero, Techdirt's July Book Club OfferingMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120607/01452619232/aliens-v-riaa-win-early-release-copy-year-zero-techdirts-july-book-club-offering.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120607/01452619232/aliens-v-riaa-win-early-release-copy-year-zero-techdirts-july-book-club-offering.shtmlannounced the Techdirt Book Club book for June (and, a reminder that tomorrow at 1pm PT/4pm ET, we'll be holding a Q&A with Patricia Aufderheide for the Techdirt Book Club book for May), but today we're "pre-announcing" the Techdirt Book Club book for July. And that's because if you want to get a free hard copy of the book, you can enter a giveaway starting today. You may remember, a few months back, Rob Reid (founder of Listen.com, among other things) got plenty of attention for his rather humorous talk about copyright math. And, earlier this week, we wrote about his op-ed for the WSJ concerning ways to compete with "free."

But none of that compares to Year Zero, Reid's new novel, which is being released on July 10th. It's all about aliens who go bankrupt after they realize they owe the record labels more money than exists in the universe, because they got hooked on our music, and shared that music with other aliens. Rob has released a video trailer as a teaser for the book, which is quite amusing:

I've had a chance to read the book, and I can say that it's awesome. Think Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but with copyright law driving a major plot line. A mainstream humorous sci-fi novel that uses the Berne Convention as a key plot point and tosses aside casual references to Larry Lessig and Fark? Yes. Count me in. And, unlike most novels that bring up copyright, this one gets the legal issues mostly right (there is one point where trademark and copyright get confused, but it's so minor, you'll let it slip).

Anyway, as we said, this will be the Book Club book for July, and we'll be doing some fun things with Rob to have him engage with everyone here—but, if you're lucky, there's a chance for you to get a physical copy of the book delivered a month before it's actually released. Rob has the details on his blog, but basically you have to let him know (via a comment on his blog, a tweet or a Facebook comment) what song you'd like to beam to the aliens. Thirty winners -- ten from the comments, ten from Twitter and ten from Facebook (though you can enter all three) -- will be chosen at random to get books. So, go ahead and beam some songs to aliens. And just hope the RIAA doesn't claim that you're "inducing" infringement by doing so...

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]]>join in the funhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120607/01452619232Mon, 4 Jun 2012 12:15:00 PDTNot Only Can You 'Compete With Free' You Have To If You Don't Want Your Business Overrun By PiracyMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120602/02140019181/not-only-can-you-compete-with-free-you-have-to-if-you-dont-want-your-business-overrun-piracy.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120602/02140019181/not-only-can-you-compete-with-free-you-have-to-if-you-dont-want-your-business-overrun-piracy.shtmlcopyright math, has a WSJ op-ed piece, in which he tries to explain why there's so little ebook infringement, compared to music infringement. The crux of his argument? Even though the big publishers aren't really great about this stuff, rather than fight the technology, they were actually quick to embrace the technology and make authorized works available for purchase. Contrast that to the music industry, which sued every advancement in technology, including the first MP3 player, and didn't actually license an MP3 download store until many, many years after MP3 players were widely available.

Compare this to the situation in books. Although it had some small-time forerunners, the Kindle, like the Rio MP3 player, brought portability to a mass market. But the Kindle launched with licenses rather than lawsuits from the key rights-holders in its domain, and offered more than 90% of the day's best sellers when it shipped.

This meant that consumers discovered digital books through a licensed experience that delighted them. Exciting hardware, a critical mass of titles and Amazon's retail sensibilities were all integrated into a single elegant package that piracy has never matched.

Of course, piracy emerged anyway. Countless unlicensed e-books can be found online, and millions of people use them. But sales figures suggest that relatively few of these downloads represent foregone purchases. Most Kindle, iPad and Nook owners seem to view piracy as a low-rent and time-consuming experience compared with the sanctioned alternatives. They probably wouldn't if the publishers had kicked things off with a five-year content boycott.

This highlights a key point that many of us have been trying to make for a long, long time. The "answer" to the "piracy question" is not greater enforcement or more draconian laws, as the entertainment industry keeps telling us, but rather more legitimate services that can provide good value to consumers. The music industry failed at that for so long, that it really helped drive the culture of infringing music.

For years, we've pointed out that of course you can compete with free. But what Rob's article is highlighting is even more fundamental. Not only can you compete with free, you must compete with free or you're going to lose out. If you don't offer a legitimate alternative, people will flock to the illegitimate ones. Yes, some people will always infringe, but over and over again we see how legitimate services pull people away from file sharing and towards paying -- if they provide enough value at a reasonable price.

Now, I know that some will quibble with one other major difference between books and music that Rob sort of leaps over in his piece: it was much easier to create digital music than ebooks. You could just take CDs and drop it into your computer and there you go. There really wasn't a simple equivalent for books. Sure, lots of people have scanners, but that's a laborious process. Still, I'm not convinced that was really as big a deal as I'm sure some will make of it. That's because once a single copy of a book is digitized, it's very quickly available all over the place. And there were plenty of people working to digitize books long before the Kindle came along. It might have been a limiting factor, but certainly not a complete hindrance to ebook infringement.

Either way, the key takeaway can hardly be challenged: the way to deal with piracy is to offer good legitimate services, and preferably more than just one, so they can compete on adding value. Unfortunately, many in the industry like to just dip their toes in the water with a few services -- and as soon as they become successful, seek to raise prices. That's no way to encourage a long term market success.

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]]>basic-economicshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120602/02140019181Thu, 15 Mar 2012 11:54:40 PDTWhen Entertainment Industry Numbers Are More Suited To Comedy Than AnalysisLeigh Beadonhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120315/08475818116/when-entertainment-industry-numbers-are-more-suited-to-comedy-than-analysis.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120315/08475818116/when-entertainment-industry-numbers-are-more-suited-to-comedy-than-analysis.shtmlWe've often criticized the entertainment industry for their use of utterly bogus math to claim massive, completely unrealistic losses from piracy. As Mike once noted, "it would actually be kind of funny... if policy makers and the press didn't actually believe those numbers and pass bad legislation based on them."

The movie folks also tell us that our economy loses over 370,000 jobs to content theft, which is quite a lot when you consider that back in '98 the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the motion picture and video industries were employing 270,000 people. Other data has the music industry at about 45,000 people. And so the job losses that came with the internet and all that content theft have therefore left us with negative employment in our content industries. This is just one of the many mind-blowing statistics that copyright mathematicians have to deal with every day. And some people think that string theory is tough.

Reid doesn't do any actual debunking, because he doesn't need to—the numbers are so plainly false that just putting them in the spotlight is enough to get the audience laughing. It's a lot of fun, but it also underlines the bigger question: why do journalists and policy makers still blindly accept and repeat those same numbers? Hopefully, as more and more people recognize the industry's claims for the comedic fiction that they are, that will begin to change.